Giant Forest Village, Sequoia National Park 1972

This photograph shows a quiet winter’s day at the Giant Forest Village in Sequoia National Park in 1972, back when visitors could still stay overnight among the towering sequoias. A handful of cars—classic American sedans of the era—are parked outside the low wooden buildings, their roofs trimmed in deep forest green to blend with the surroundings. Snow sits in patches around the parking area, melting slowly in the weak winter sunshine.

The building seen here housed several essentials for travelers: motel registration, a cafeteria, and a small gift shop stocked with postcards, guidebooks, and souvenirs carved from local wood. For many families, a stay in Giant Forest Village was part of the quintessential national park experience—spending the day exploring the groves, and the evening gathered around a fire in one of the rustic lodges or cabins.

Opened in the 1920s, the village was built at a time when the priority was to bring visitors into the forest rather than protect the ecosystem from heavy use. By the mid-1970s and into the 1990s, growing concern over soil compaction around the giant sequoias—particularly near iconic trees like the General Sherman—led to major changes. In 1999, the last of the lodging and commercial buildings here were removed, and the area was restored to better protect the ancient grove.

Today, nothing like this remains in the Giant Forest—overnight accommodations have moved to locations outside the grove, and the site has returned to a more natural and quieter state. This photo captures a chapter now gone: the era when you could wake up, open your motel door, and step directly into a forest that had been growing long before humans built roads, lodges, or national parks.